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There have been a number of stories on social media of Zimbabweans being abducted, mistreated and humiliated and then released with the implication being that these abductions and severe mistreatment were organised and carried out by State agents, in particular State intelligence officers.

Some were so unbelievable that no one even pretended to believe them. Others gathered momentum, again in social media reports and frequently drifting into foreign media reports. 

In several cases those claiming abduction, or for whom abduction claims have been made, have left the country and have been looked after once outside the country by those who accept the claims at face value.

There have always been some curious factors. First none of those for whom abduction claims have been made have been very important. 

There was a brief flurry of claims for a few hours involving a leading opposition figure, Mr Tendai Biti, but he had those shot down promptly. 

They appear to have arisen from someone unable to get hold of him and then adding two and two to get 22 million.

The rest have all been people who no one really sees as someone who decides policies and programmes for opposition parties or who, to be blunt, the Government needs to worry very much about.

One would assume if there was some sort of black programme being run using abductions then far more prominent and important people would be the targets.

In fact, in many cases the only serious importance that these people have, and the prominence they achieve, is that there have been claims they were kidnapped and assaulted. 

Without those claims they would not be in the public eye at all, or only in a minor capacity. The claims made have certainly given them a higher profile, if only for a while.

The second curious factor is that those who claim they were abducted, or for whom abduction claims are made, never make formal reports, in fact, they go out of their way not to tell the police anything they remember and know. 

Yet kidnapping is a very serious criminal offence, one for which a life sentence is technically possible and we have seen 20 years plus dished out. 

Prolonged assault, and regardless of whether anyone is hit or not the sort of treatment claimed in social media reports would constitute serious assault, and again this is in the upper ends of criminal activity.

Most people who have been kidnapped and badly mistreated co-operate with the police because they want to see the kidnapper and those who assaulted them in court, being convicted and then disappearing for a lot of years. 

Even if identification is difficult and evidence is not good enough for a conviction then civil actions are the obvious second string, where the test is the balance of probabilities not proof beyond reasonable doubt, and where you can sue the boss of those you think kidnapped you if you reckon there was an organisation behind the kidnapping. 

You can even do both, since criminal law and civil actions are not mutually exclusive.

But we get nothing like this, not even an attempt to use the law, despite the independence of the courts, their imperviousness to pressure and the powers that courts have to summon witnesses and even to demand that the police explain what they are doing to investigate a complaint. 

Even if people feel they cannot trust the police and the courts to act, one would assume they would want to have their story on record. But no.

Of course, it is an offence to make a false report to the police, knowing it to be false since mistakes, even big mistakes, in a report are not regarded as criminal. 

And testifying to deliberate falsehoods under oath in court is perjury, another criminal offence.

We now have two young women in court over abduction claims involving themselves and a co-accused who has gone on a long holiday outside the country. 

Their defence is that they never made such claims and the State case is that they did and that there was no abduction in any case.

These are factual matters that the court is quite competent to adjudicate, and the two young women have lawyers so the court will be given all evidence.

A lot of people will be interested in the result, and possibly in the result of any appeals, but the matter is finally, after a large number of delays, now in a court.

One curious point is that the assertion that the two did not make any claims of abduction is only now coming to light, two years after the initial arrest. 

Well, no one is obliged to deny publicly a false story and no one is responsible for what other people may write, but a lot of heartache for the two could have been avoided if they had spoken out sooner.

In any case the revelation, made when charges were finally pressed in a trial, must make a lot of people think a bit harder about accepting social media reports as gospel truth. 

There has been an assumption that all these abduction reports are factual and there are black operations launched against minor figures.

These have been used by those who should know better to keep sanctions pressure on Zimbabwe and to justify their allegations that the Second Republic, despite its openness and transparency, is indeed an abuser of human rights. 

That has now been punctured and we find the solid ball of “social media fact” was nothing more than a balloon that one simple statement pricked. 

The logic was always dubious, as we have shown, and now the logic is backed by fact. 

Zimbabwe may not be perfect, but the imperfections are not deliberate policies of repression as is claimed by some on social media who seem to follow the advice of Adolf Hitler that when you tell a lie tell a big one, one so preposterous that people may believe it since they assume no one could be that awful.

But in the end the truth comes out, and if a house of cards is built on a falsehood then it collapses. And already one house of cards has collapsed and the trial has only just started.